In 2011, the Emergency Relief Coordinator (ERC) led an ambitious process to strengthen and restructure the international humanitarian system in an era of larger-scale and more-complex global emergencies.

A wave of natural disasters and political upheaval in 2011 threatened tens of millions of lives, not only in developing countries but also in some of the richest and most prepared societies. This included a devastating earthquake and tsunami in Japan, and disasters in Australia, New Zealand and the United States. Globally, natural disasters killed almost 26,000 people. The cumulative economic cost was US$380 billion, making 2011 the most expensive year in history.[1]

Record droughts and flooding in Latin America, Africa, South Asia and South-East Asia appeared to confirm the trend of more frequent and extreme weather events. This underlined the need to boost national preparedness mechanisms and the resilience of crisis-affected
communities.

“OCHA Somalia’s contribution during the famine was vital in bringing all NGO and UN actors together and sharing information on humanitarian needs in Somalia. Thanks to OCHA we were able to mobilize resources to quickly deliver aid to the population in need.”

Tight financial constraints and increasing donor scrutiny put growing pressure on aid organizations to demonstrate the positive impact of their work and value for money, not only in their response to sudden-onset disasters, but in addressing the underlying causes of chronic emergencies.

OCHA successfully brought together the efforts of a wide range of partners to bring the food-and-nutrition crisis in the Horn of Africa to global attention. It coordinated the activities of a diverse group of organizations in the deeply insecure environment of Somalia, where the UN declared a famine for the first time in over 20 years. The lessons learned from this response prompted a quick increase in advocacy and planning after warnings of a new food crisis in the Sahel region of Western Africa.

Issues of humanitarian access and the protection of civilians also came to the fore in 2011. The crises in Somalia, Sudan, South Sudan, Syria and Yemen highlighted the ongoing challenge of working in environments where crises have political, human rights, conflict and humanitarian dimensions.

OCHA continued to work to make the international humanitarian system more inclusive, strengthening coordination among existing partners, deepening relationships with national and regional authorities and collaborating with a wider set of actors. This culminated in the adoption of the Inter-Agency Standing Committee (IASC) Transformative Agenda in December, designed to improve the quality of response across the humanitarian system through stronger leadership, greater accountability, better preparedness and improved advocacy.

Throughout 2011, humanitarian partners focused on providing greater international support for regional, national and local action. A new understanding was reached among international aid agencies to respond faster, to work together more cohesively and to measure the collective impact of their work.

To support that agenda, OCHA worked to strengthen humanitarian leadership and staffing, created better information tools to guide decision makers, and promoted more collaboration through pooled funds and common strategic plans in its countries of operation. It also increased its awareness-raising activities across a range of online and offline platforms.

[1] The Year That Shook the Rich: A review of natural disasters in 2011. The Brookings Institution – London School of Economics Project on Internal Displacement, March 2012.

Humanitarian Crises

A Year of Political Change

2011 saw dramatic shifts in the political landscape of many countries in Africa and the Middle East, with significant humanitarian consequences. Contested elections in Côte d’Ivoire in 2010 plunged that country into a protracted period of armed violence. To coordinate the humanitarian response, OCHA reopened its office and rapidly increased the number of staff. At the peak of the crisis, more than 1 million people had fled their homes to locations within Côte d’Ivoire and in neighbouring countries. As the year ended and security returned, many still needed help to return home and rebuild their lives

In Libya, civil unrest in February evolved into a civil war that lasted until October. It cost tens of thousands of lives and forced more than 700,000 third-party nationals to flee. At the height of the conflict, many social services broke down, leading to widespread deprivation. A relief effort was established to help those who left and to assist those who remained. In a complex and uncertain environment, OCHA coordinated the response, first from Cairo and Tunisia and later from Benghazi and Tripoli. It provided essential information and secured access to conflict-affected areas through coordination with the Government, opposition forces and NATO.

Political unrest and conflict in Yemen, a country already suffering from many long-running crises, led to displacement and rising malnutrition. One UN agency warned that half a million Yemeni children were at risk of dying during 2012. Despite insecurity, highlighted by the kidnapping of six staff in January 2012, OCHA developed a joint response plan to tackle the humanitarian crisis. It also led efforts to negotiate access and raise the profile of the crisis, leading to a significant increase in NGOs establishing programmes, even as international attention remained focused on political transition in the country.

OCHA also spearheaded efforts to improve humanitarian access to conflict-affected areas in Syria, working with the Syrian Arab Red Crescent. It spoke out on the challenges surrounding calls for a humanitarian corridor and establishing safe zones, and advised on international humanitarian law concerning the protection of civilians. The ERC made a high-profile visit to Syria in March 2012 to draw attention to the worsening humanitarian situation, and to negotiate access for humanitarian organizations.

She also visited the occupied Palestinian territory (oPt) to highlight the displacement affecting its 4 million people.

In Sudan and South Sudan, OCHA led one of the world’s largest humanitarian operations against the backdrop of historic political change. It successfully organized interagency contingency planning ahead of the independence referendum for South Sudan. This ensured the humanitarian community was fully prepared and could respond rapidly to post-independence fighting in Abyei, South Kordofan and Blue Nile. OCHA also helped coordinate the safe return of more than 200,000 Southern Sudanese, and led the response to violent clashes in Jonglei at the end of the year.

During the second half of the year, OCHA worked hard to persuade the Sudanese Government to grant humanitarian organizations greater access to areas of conflict, including Blue Nile, South Kordofan and Darfur, but with mixed success. Securing unhindered access to people in need in Sudan remains one of the most pressing challenges on the humanitarian agenda in 2012.

By contrast, OCHA negotiations achieved significant success in Myanmar, securing humanitarian access for the first time to conflict-affected areas in Kachin state, where more than 50,000 people had been displaced by violence.

OCHA also raised awareness of a severe food crisis in the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK) through the ERC’s historic five-day visit to Pyonyang, and to the province of South Hamgyong and Kangwon in October. Her trip bolstered efforts to improve access and find longer-term solutions to chronic food insecurity in the country.

Droughts, earthquakes and floods—a year of natural disasters

A series of devastating natural disasters took place in 2011. Some were in situations of chronic poverty and conflict (Somalia), and others in countries with highly evolved national response systems (Japan, Thailand and New Zealand). OCHA tailored its response to each crisis, depending on the context and scale of the needs.

The earthquake and tsunami in Japan in March was the year’s deadliest disaster, with more than 20,000 lives lost. In the hours following the disaster, OCHA was asked to establish a coordination cell to provide coordinated information about the crisis. It also advised the Government on how best to manage international offers of humanitarian assistance. Japan received more than $722 million in aid, which accounted for a large percentage of all international humanitarian disaster funding in 2011.

“The development of the regional Sahel strategy initiated as early as October 2011, following the first indications of a potential crisis, demonstrated the relevance of [OCHA-led mechanisms] and their positive impact on well-coordinated and timely response to humanitarian needs.”

- Claude Jibidar, Deputy Director of the World Food Programme in West Africa

The world’s largest humanitarian crisis of 2011 took place in the Horn of Africa. A combination of severe drought, chronic poverty and persistent conflict left more than 13 million people across five countries in need of help. Hundreds of thousands of Somalis were forced to seek refuge in neighbouring countries, adding to the hardship faced by people in those countries.

OCHA warned of the impending emergency in 2010 and continued drawing attention to this in early 2011. The OCHA-managed Central Emergency Response Fund (CERF) disbursed $35 million to help combat drought in the Horn of Africa in the first half of the year. By the end of 2011, CERF had provided more than $107 million to kick-start critical and underfunded relief programmes. But the overall response was slow, and world attention was only fully galvanized by the declaration of famine in parts of Somalia in July. This underlined the particular challenge of highlighting slow-onset and highly complex crises in places that are difficult to access.

OCHA declared a corporate emergency, requiring significant human resources from OCHA offices around the world to support the response. It established a regional leadership structure in Nairobi, deployed surge staff, and enhanced the quality and frequency of its information products, ensuring it had the coordination capacity in place to lead the required large-scale regional response. A large advocacy effort from July onwards had considerable success, with Somalia moving from one of the worst-funded to one of the best-funded crises of the year.

OCHA also worked to improve collaboration between Western and Islamic aid organizations. This was part of OCHA’s longer-term goal to build a more inclusive humanitarian community. It helped achieve the more immediate goal of improving access to areas in Somalia where Western actors were banned. OCHA built relationships with the African Union (AU), the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) and the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC). This led to a massive increase in assistance in the second half of 2011 and contributed to an eventual end to the famine, although the situation remained severe for many millions of people.

Towards the end of 2011, warnings began about a potentially serious food crisis in the Sahel, including Niger, Chad and Mali. Learning from the Horn of Africa experience, aid agencies pursued a high-profile campaign to raise awareness and secure funds for early international action in line with established national response plans. By the beginning of 2012, the Sahel situation was firmly on the international and regional agenda. With chronic poverty and lack of development at the heart of this recurrent crisis, humanitarian and development organizations worked together from the start to find long-term strategies aimed at strengthening the resilience of people at risk.

Massive flooding posed severe challenges to many countries in 2011. In Asia and the Pacific, the world’s most disaster-prone region, OCHA supported national-led efforts to tackle storms and flooding in the Philippines, Cambodia, Lao People’s Democratic Republic, Thailand and Viet Nam.

In Latin America, OCHA supported national efforts in Colombia, including the development of innovative information management products such as a new crisis mapping platform to monitor floods. In November, the Deputy ERC visited flood-affected countries in Central America to attract more international attention to the situation.

The people of Pakistan suffered their second flood emergency in as many years. While the crisis in 2011 was not on the same scale as the historic flooding of 2010, it had a devastating impact on people who had not fully recovered from the previous year. OCHA helped ensure the Government response targeted the most vulnerable people and worked with partners to prioritize the available resources for the communities most in need.

The advance of cholera

Even as world attention was drawn to countries with large natural catastrophes and political upheaval, the spread of cholera in several countries underlined the serious humanitarian consequences of disease outbreaks and the need for rapid intervention.

One year after an earthquake destroyed much of Haiti’s capital, Port-au-Prince, and surrounding areas, millions of Haitians continued to face a daily struggle for survival. OCHA’s fundraising and awareness-raising efforts helped keep the spotlight on the situation facing hundreds of thousands of people still in camps, and in particular on the resurgence of cholera in a poor island nation that had not seen an outbreak for more than a century.

Cholera also spread across West and Central Africa. This included the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), which, while garnering less global attention than in previous years, still constitutes one of the world’s largest humanitarian emergencies. The response to the DRC crisis was made more difficult by persistent insecurity in the east of the country, and uncertainty around the outcome of the presidential election in late November. Localized cholera outbreaks continued in 2011 in Zimbabwe, where the humanitarian situation remained fragile despite signs of growing stability.

Strengthening the System

Building a more inclusive humanitarian community

2011 saw OCHA senior management make an intense effort to build broader and deeper national, regional and international partnerships, including with a range of new resource partners, and an extensive outreach programme to the AU and the OIC, and to countries in the Asia-Pacific region, Latin America, and Central and Eastern Europe.

OCHA established a new office in Abu Dhabi to enhance dialogue with GCC countries and Islamic NGOs, and signed a memorandum of understanding with the OIC. These relationships helped to foster closer cooperation between Western and Islamic humanitarian responders to the Somalia famine.

OCHA supported initiatives to strengthen principled engagement on humanitarian civil-military coordination. OCHA’s strategic dialogue with NATO during the Libya conflict was essential to ensuring the safe delivery of aid. It supported the HOPEFOR initiative, co-sponsored by Qatar, Turkey and the Dominican Republic, which aims to improve the effectiveness and coordination of military and civil-defence assets for natural disaster response. In its discussions with Member States, OCHA asserted the importance of maintaining a clear distinction between military and humanitarian operations—a principle seen to be under increasing pressure.

The rapid expansion of communication technologies led to new forms of cooperation. During the 2010 Haiti response, hundreds of volunteer information management experts demonstrated new ways of gathering and presenting information during crises. OCHA analysed this progress in a seminal study titled Disaster Relief 2.0. In Libya, OCHA put its lessons learned into practice by working with volunteer communities to produce a Libya crisis map—an online map that showed live information relevant to relief efforts such as health needs, security threats or refugee movements.

OCHA also built on its relationship with the business community, co-launching the new UN-Business partnership gateway business.un.org. It maintained pro-bono relationships with Ericsson to provide emergency telecommunications services, and with Deutsche Post DHL to support logistics. OCHA worked with the music industry to widen the scope and impact of its awareness-raising work and reach new audiences. To promote the annual World Humanitarian Day, OCHA laid the groundwork for a global partnership with Warner Music.

Preparing for crisis

The importance of effective preparedness measures in reducing the loss of life and promoting faster recovery was again highlighted in 2011. Through the work of its country and regional offices, OCHA helped communities around the world to draft laws, establish early warning systems and enhance national response structures.

In September, OCHA regional offices agreed on a Minimum Preparedness Package, comprising essential tools for effective risk analysis, contingency planning and coordination mechanisms. OCHA supported interagency partners in developing best practice and common approaches to national emergency preparedness through a five-country pilot initiative in Ghana, Uganda, Nepal, Haiti and the Philippines.

This work, as well as other forms of cooperation in 2011, demonstrated the increasing capacity and readiness of national and regional authorities to lead prevention-and-response operations. Increasingly, the international humanitarian system will play a primarily supportive and advisory role to national and regional initiatives.

Learning from experience, managing information and planning

OCHA strengthened its leading role in humanitarian policy development by intensifying its collaboration with IASC partners and a global network of policy and research partners. It held its first partner-policy conference in December 2011, and laid the groundwork for a new publication on humanitarian policy, which will be released in 2012.

In April, OCHA launched the report To Stay and Deliver, which captures the best practices that have enabled aid organizations to work in high-risk areas, maintain operations, and provide protection and life-saving assistance to people in need. OCHA also supported the production of “UN Integration and Humanitarian Space”, which is an independent study commissioned by the UN Integration Steering Group. OCHA also published a number of policy briefing papers, for example on peace-building and slow-onset emergencies, and a synthesis of evaluations of humanitarian operations.

OCHA also reviewed its approach to information management, starting with a data audit supported by the Economist Intelligence Unit. The audit identified a lack of consistency in data collection and storage across OCHA offices, which was a significant impediment to in-depth analysis and consistent reporting. The foundations for better inter-agency humanitarian data management were put in place. This included developing a common-request format for easier cluster data collection and improved system-wide data sharing. Both will form the basis of an enhanced information management system in 2012, and will put OCHA on a path towards the provision of open data and increased aid transparency.

An access-monitoring system was implemented in 12 countries to provide better data on access constraints in conflict situations, enabling, for example, 125 NGOs operating in the oPt to overcome checkpoint, visa and travel-permit issues.

OCHA also managed a number of Inter-Agency Real Time Evaluations, including in Pakistan, the Philippines, Kenya and Haiti. They provided rapid feedback on coordination and operational challenges in the midst of humanitarian operations.

“The ERF was a great success, as it helped cushion pastoralists against the loss of lives and livelihoods, reduced mortality and morbidity in humans and livestock through targeted interventions in key areas, and reduced incidents of conflict over water among local communities.”

- Jarso Mokku, Programmes Manager of Northern Aid, a national NGO working in northern Kenya

OCHA continued to produce a large number of information products to support its coordination and advocacy efforts. Situation reports, maps and ERC key messages were issued for all major crises. Reflecting the increasing importance of social media, OCHA launched an ERC and OCHA Twitter account, enabling regular engagement with about 7,250 followers. This is in addition to OCHA’s 11,250 Facebook followers. OCHA films, such as the World Humanitarian Day music video, were viewed over 290,000 times on video-sharing platforms such as YouTube.

IRIN, the humanitarian news service, deepened its analytical coverage of humanitarian policy issues and attracted 12.3 million unique page views (31 per cent more than in 2010). It also expanded its reach and exposure through a partnership with the UK-based Guardian Development Network. An improved corporate website (unocha.org) increased traffic and content, including the addition of regular stories to highlight the impact of the work done by OCHA staff and partners.

Financing humanitarian response

OCHA continued to focus on improving the effectiveness of humanitarian planning and financing through consolidated appeals and pooled funds. Throughout its country offices, OCHA led common humanitarian programming by improving needs assessments, ensuring projects complement each other, avoiding duplication and focusing on agreed priorities. In 2011, the combined value of coordinated humanitarian programming reached $9.4 billion. In comparison, OCHA’s total programme expenditure in 2011 was $215.3 million, a little over 2 per cent of the funds requested through coordinated humanitarian plans.

CERF, managed by OCHA, is a key element in UN efforts to deliver aid more quickly and equitably. It raised a record $465 million in 2011—the highest level since it was established in 2006. OCHA also broadened support for pooled funds, such as the Emergency Response Funds (ERFs) and Common Humanitarian Funds (CHFs). It also developed new ways of donating in 2011, allowing private-sector and individual contributions to the ERFs.

To support strategic humanitarian planning and financing, OCHA introduced a new inter-agency agreement on coordinated needs assessments to help Humanitarian Country Teams (HCTs) base their programmatic and funding decisions on thorough analysis and prioritization. OCHA initiated a training programme to improve assessment skills among its own staff. It also piloted a programme for cluster coordinators, which will be revised in 2012. The IASC Gender Marker was successfully included in all Consolidated Appeals (CAPs) in 2011, allowing donors to target funds towards gender-sensitive projects.

Looking Forward

“I fully support the work of the Emergency Relief Coordinator and the efforts underway in the IASC on a set of transformative actions to the humanitarian response system. We really see the need for stronger humanitarian leadership at country level and a better coordinated response capacity, building on the cluster system.”

The first months of 2012 saw the continuation of many of the crises that dominated 2011. They included Somalia, Sudan and South Sudan, as well as worsening emergencies in Syria and the Sahel. OCHA will continue to lead efforts to draw international attention to the humanitarian consequences of these crises, and to secure unhindered access for humanitarian agencies.

Financial uncertainty for the humanitarian aid sector’s traditional donor countries will continue to create pressure to secure new sources of financing. OCHA will increase efforts to support that process through high-level outreach to non-traditional donors. However, OCHA recognizes that to win broader support, it must do more to demonstrate the impact of its work and that of its partners.